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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/29067666">do not go gentle</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/demonicxiconic/pseuds/demonicxiconic'>demonicxiconic</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Magnus Archives (Podcast)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Afterlife, Canon-Typical The Spiral Content (The Magnus Archives), Character Study, Dream Logic, Gen, He/Him Pronouns for Michael | The Distortion, Identity Issues, barely any beta we die when percieved like peter lukas, fuckhands mcmike needs a hug 2k21, how michael learned to start worrying and try to regain his humanity, this is a weird one yall, yeah it's just him</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-01-29</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-01-29</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-13 09:01:47</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Major Character Death</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>832</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/29067666</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/demonicxiconic/pseuds/demonicxiconic</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Statement of Michael, regarding studies in redeath and how to fight it.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>background gerry/michael - Relationship</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>4</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>23</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>do not go gentle</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>Rage.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And love, to a lesser degree.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>These are the things he is left with, clutching desperately in his too-long-too-thin monster monster </span>
  <em>
    <span>monster</span>
  </em>
  <span> hands.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Such human things, and yet real people wince at his appearance, they fear his approach, they cower in his halls and he hates that he loves their real, </span>
  <em>
    <span>honest </span>
  </em>
  <span>fear.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Michael is not Michael Shelley, no more than that stick-thin one with the wide dark eyes is Gertrude Robinson. They share a title, yes. But Sims has nothing of hers. No memories, connections, feelings, nothing. He is plagued by the not-knowing, deep into the night when his frantic spiraling mind </span>
  <em>
    <span>feeds </span>
  </em>
  <span>Michael, and he sympathises, even as he drinks in the sickly sweet nectar of his paranoia.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Nothing is better than scraps, though. And that is all Michael has, all he is.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He has straw-blonde hair, and he has an odd, hiccupy laugh, and he has anger that violently sparks and flares at the mention of the Eye and its simpering servants, and these are bits of the man who entered that warped door with a map and trust and not much else.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>But the hair is snarled into impossible, unending, maddening swirls, and the laugh causes nosebleeds and headaches and breakdowns, and the anger has only come after his who was ripped mercilessly, messily from his what.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He thinks (thinks? can you think if your brain is half-melded into the madness that killed you?), sometimes, when his halls are empty of sobs other than his own ear-shattering ones. Is he evil for serving the only purpose he has? The rage is fruitless and the love is aimless and all he was and will be is a ghost in the machine, a wrench in the works, something to frighten those who wish to meddle with the unknown and unknowable and something to break the concentration of the workers for a brief moment of divine terror before they are pulled back to their stations. Is it so wrong that he goes through his unplanned motions, plays out plots that are unfathomable to all that have not touched the melted mind of what was Michael Shelley?</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He longs for an unknown factor, he rages long and hard against a phantom of someone he once worshipped, he and all his life is a haunting shadow and he is the spirit they saw, rattling chains in the night for nothing better to do. For this, he cries neon into the night, and even his private tears are a reminder that he is broken beyond humanity, that his Orpheus is trapped far away and he will stay in the depths of darkness forever. He is the house and the haunting, the sheets and the spirit beneath, the heart beating double-time under the floorboards and the frantic thoughts of the one who put it there.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>But Michael will not give up the ghost.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>So he fumbles through directionless rage, he pines for the abstract concept of dark and sharp and knowing, he clings to these human things and this distant identity even as he eats each and every living thing that could ever assure him that this is not a hallucination, he is not a ghost in the machine.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He hopes in silence, and it feels achingly familiar, even if it twists wrong at the end and sends him into spirals of laughter that would break any real person’s chest.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And at the culmination of it all? The place where the fractals end and the pocketwatch stops swinging? The place where he goes out, not with a bang but with a pathetic, pathetic, </span>
  <em>
    <span>human</span>
  </em>
  <span> scream?</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Though he is more of a person than before, Michael finishes his spiral as a part of it. He screams, and his-its-the-thing-that-grabbed-the-assistant-as-a-life-raft-and-did-not-let-go’s final “thought” is that he wishes he had gone out with a bang. Proper fireworks, exploding into nonsense shapes and raining down madness in little sparks, joining the stars for just a moment.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Michael, infinite, small, incomprehensible, simple, nonsensical, symmetrical, hopeless and so full of a depressingly human hope that maybe things will change one day, really change, not just shift in hue. He hopes he will never have to look at that sickly canary color again, never stare at it and know it is a part of him as certain as his hands, hands that once held others close and are now only good for rending minds apart. Michael hopes, and this is the kicker, that he will see his bookburner when his door shuts in his face for the first time.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He started at a crescendo, and ended at a whisper, never once touching a music note, and at that he would smile, if he knew what a mouth was.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>But knowledge has never been his particular forte, so Michael, never-ending and terminated, lets the ghost of a smile play across his face, a final fist in the air, a little sliver of person there in the place where the unending starts a new chapter. </span>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>thank u for reading this incomprehensible mess! i'm @demonicxiconic on tumblr if you wanna yell at/with me :)</p></blockquote></div></div>
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